The psychedelic label given to this record seems entirely misplaced from the opening track, A Girl Like You. It's something I would expect to find opening a Temptations or Four Tops album with its big brass blasts blaring in magnificent reverb behind the falsetto three part harmony.
I'm already settling in for a taste of Motown when Find Somebody Like You steps up with that heavy treble guitar dancing the tightrope between the Beatles and the 13th Floor Elevators. Suffice to say I was grateful for the passing resemblance to something tuneful but it was too sharp and rattly to be pleasant in the face of its predecessor.
I'm So Happy Now is a title not devoid of irony at this juncture as it puts me in mind of a bipolar patient pitching violently on a sea of moods. Yes, in what seems to be the establishing of an on/off relationship with the Motown feel, we're back in Axel Foley country but this time with a greater presence of acoustic guitar, the repeated notes reminding me of Sweetest Feeling.
Sueno, complete with that tilde over the N that I can't be arsed to figure out on this keyboard, begins as you might expect, with bit of a spaghetti western cadenza but then breaks into a poppy little song that is no more reminiscent of Latin music than Metallica. True, there are castanets audible later on but that's pretty much it.
In How Can I Be Sure we take a step into the world of 60s movies set in lazy, hot European climates. The leading lady is driving with the top down along a winding mountain pass to where a handsome man will open her car door and escort her thru the doors of a casino. The only thing wavier than his hair are the flared trousers of his suit and the only thing cheesier than that image is this song. I love it.
The title track delivers on its promise but not in the pulsing, funky way I had hoped for. Rather, it's a horizontal, bland little samba the most notable detail of which is the tight harmonies. It's okay but I'm struggling to discern what about it makes it worth naming the album after.
If You Knew I had previously thought was the opening track thanks to another MP3 tagging fuck up here at HQ but that is some indication of the song's strength. Again, I can hear one of the boy bands of the day singing this. It's not a show stopper but it's very catchy and precise as a summer stroller.
I Don't Love You Anymore gives a bit too much attention to the congas and bongos for my liking and while simple song concepts are often the best, this one is incongruous to its arrangement. The vocal sweeps of harmony seem to be attempting to mask the weaknesses of the core material whereas the percussion merely erects a big neon sign over it flashing "FILLER FILLER FILLLER".
I like You Better Run. It's the rockiest of the songs so far and if not for a bit of over-confident ad libbing and a lack of imagination with the guitar parts, it'd be more my thing but I lost concentration fairly quickly and that's never a good sign.
As is so often the lamentable truth, the album is now starting to show signs of fatigue. A Place In The Sun contains a few of what I recognise as time-filling tricks. An instrumental round with the lyrics spoken, an elongated finish as each line is stretched to a few bars and littered with languishing pauses for the singer to extemporise - these are the tools that dig the grave that waits to swallow the corpse of what promised so much.
I'll concede that It's Love was a surprisingly strong closer given the omens but those two earlier tracks were too weak to be on an album I enjoyed as much as I did this one on the whole. This will be one of those that I cherry pick for a mix tape, methinks.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Wednesday, August 05, 2015
#0094: The Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday [***]
I dunno whether it's cuz it's summer or cuz the previous album was so bad but I kinda liked this. Singable, short tunes, lovely harmonies, little bit of strange loopiness for the hippies and we're done.
The Byrds did right by me a while back by doing exactly the same thing with Tambourine Man, and I never forget a good deed.
I'm kidding, I don't owe the Byrds a brass ha'penny. Each album must stand on its own merits, or at least its own merits as they relate to *my* experience. This is, after all, a personal blog cataloguing my not even fully-formed opinions. These are knee jerk reactions from someone who has never claimed to be even an amateur music journalist.
Now even though this is a pleasant album, it is nevertheless kinda samey. You could probably chang through a few of these tunes sat round a beach fire. So You Wanna Be A Rock n Roll Star kicks it off with a latin flavoured cascade of harmonies telling me that if I wear tight trousers, brush my hair and sell my soul to the label then everything will be all right. It's tongue in cheek cynicism at best and in this key and tempo, even the tepid bitterness of the message is lost in that groovy sixtiesness.
The album bobs along quite happily from there with my attention drifting in out, I confess but it's not the kind of drifting that happens when I'm bored. This is more a pleasant meandering, as if one was strolling through a park in the 60s and various groups of hippies are sat around on the grass, playing guitars and singing on the grass[1]. Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers in their hair and between groups, as you pass out of earshot of one and into range of the next, this is when your focus is swept up in the mood itself rather than the specifics of the songs.
There are a few minutes where it gets a bit too chaotic and surreal for my tastes but on the whole I'm certain I'll return to this[2].
[1] - of course the repetition was deliberate. Tch.
[2] - cuz I already have ;-)
The Byrds did right by me a while back by doing exactly the same thing with Tambourine Man, and I never forget a good deed.
I'm kidding, I don't owe the Byrds a brass ha'penny. Each album must stand on its own merits, or at least its own merits as they relate to *my* experience. This is, after all, a personal blog cataloguing my not even fully-formed opinions. These are knee jerk reactions from someone who has never claimed to be even an amateur music journalist.
Now even though this is a pleasant album, it is nevertheless kinda samey. You could probably chang through a few of these tunes sat round a beach fire. So You Wanna Be A Rock n Roll Star kicks it off with a latin flavoured cascade of harmonies telling me that if I wear tight trousers, brush my hair and sell my soul to the label then everything will be all right. It's tongue in cheek cynicism at best and in this key and tempo, even the tepid bitterness of the message is lost in that groovy sixtiesness.
The album bobs along quite happily from there with my attention drifting in out, I confess but it's not the kind of drifting that happens when I'm bored. This is more a pleasant meandering, as if one was strolling through a park in the 60s and various groups of hippies are sat around on the grass, playing guitars and singing on the grass[1]. Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers in their hair and between groups, as you pass out of earshot of one and into range of the next, this is when your focus is swept up in the mood itself rather than the specifics of the songs.
There are a few minutes where it gets a bit too chaotic and surreal for my tastes but on the whole I'm certain I'll return to this[2].
[1] - of course the repetition was deliberate. Tch.
[2] - cuz I already have ;-)
Sunday, July 12, 2015
#0093: The Doors []
Aside from Oliver Stone's film, I fucking hate The Doors. Mostly because they are as overrated as Bob Dylan. The more you try to push something in my face, the more I will openly detest and ridicule it. That attitude has connotations far beyond music but I don't wanna open that particular can of worms here.
I borrowed a Doors album from the library when I was a teenager. It was painfully dull. I'm gonna try to open my mind on this but, y'no, good intentions and everything.
To say I fucking hate The Doors is to be a little misleading as I am quite happy to sing along to the radio or the jukebox when Light My Fire, Riders On The Storm or the opening track on this deluge of shit, Break On Through is playing but here's the thing. The songs are just not good enough.
Morrison writes a short poem and maybe the band has a jam that he fits that over. It doesn't really matter. There has been no thought put into developing the idea any further than the core hook and its lead up. There are plenty of songs I love that are structurally very simple but a ton of work has been done on the arrangement to keep them interesting.
Break On Through's opening keyboard sound is gutsy and the riff is as strong as any Ray Charles or AC/DC intro you can name. Words start, singer can sing, what's the problem? Why is it that by the end of only two and half minutes I've already switched off? It's the keyboards. The cunt wants a solo on everything. Is he the only guy that can? Or is he the only guy who _thinks_ he can? If you don't have players who are adept at soloing then don't put solos in your fucking songs. Play to your strengths.
The keyboard solo on this is pitifully inept. He insists on using this high reedy organ noise that passes thru my ears like a knitting needle doused in drain cleaner. He then just stabs hamfistedly at the keyboard or plays these widdly widdly patterns - they're not even runs - just very small 3-5 note things that are normally used as ad hoc ornaments to embellish a wider tune.
On Soul Kitchen, he keeps jabbing away at the keys like as if he's got nothing to say but feels he has to talk to be present. He keeps doing this while there's a guitar solo going on that I can't hear cuz he's playing an accompaniment with a soloing voice and it's too loud in the mix. It's just fucking atrocious.
So much for my restraint but barely six minutes in and I'm already on the edge of rage. The Crystal Ship is only bearable cuz it's a piano solo not that infernal organ but it is at least a track I sort of like all the way thru.
Another couple of songs in and I realise I've been sold a pup on the vocals as well. He can sing in that he has a strong voice but he doesn't actually have any feel for key. This is why when he begins any tune, he's coming in on the same note (relatively speaking).
Light My Fire is no exception. Quite aside from it being a strained and eventually awkward trip thru the rhyming dictionary, that good old minor third vocal is hammered well and truly into the ground so far you'd have a better chance of finding Keith Bennett. The keyboard intro is proficient and tuneful and the mix is okay but then it goes into that extended instrumental section and keyboard solo (which I'm sure everyone is familiar with) and I'm just ready to peel, chop and cook these motherfuckers.
And it doesn't let up. The latter half of this flagrant blasphemy of any musical term applied to it continues to needle my brain with that clingy, wittering girlfriend of a sound from Back Door Man all the way to Take It As It Comes.
The definition of ambivalence is the relief I felt knowing I was on the last track and the realisation that it is eleven minutes and forty three seconds long.
Its title, "The End" is dripping with irony, for it seems not to have one. After about two and a half minutes of Morrison's directionless moaning, the guitar attempts a sitar impression that more readily puts me in mind to check him for signs of a stroke. By four minutes, I am on the verge of tears. The drums are doing the most work. They are at least staying in time. The twat on the keyboard is just aimlessly wiping his fingers across the keys with no real care or attention to what the drummer is doing. The bass player could be unconscious for all we know. Over all this, Morrison defies all rhythm, meter, tone and expression with words I don't even want to listen to. You know when you hate someone so much and every word they speak just makes you want to smash their stupid face in with the nearest thing that weighs more than a shoe?
Eight minutes forty. Drums speed up. Do not kid yourself into thinking this will somehow cause the remaining three minutes to pass any more quickly. The piece comes to a cataclysmic crescendo at ten minutes and should stop there. But Morrison comes back in with one more verse. Couldn't tell you if it's a repeat of the first or not cuz I'm sitting in a pool of my own piss right now, waiting to be sectioned.
I borrowed a Doors album from the library when I was a teenager. It was painfully dull. I'm gonna try to open my mind on this but, y'no, good intentions and everything.
To say I fucking hate The Doors is to be a little misleading as I am quite happy to sing along to the radio or the jukebox when Light My Fire, Riders On The Storm or the opening track on this deluge of shit, Break On Through is playing but here's the thing. The songs are just not good enough.
Morrison writes a short poem and maybe the band has a jam that he fits that over. It doesn't really matter. There has been no thought put into developing the idea any further than the core hook and its lead up. There are plenty of songs I love that are structurally very simple but a ton of work has been done on the arrangement to keep them interesting.
Break On Through's opening keyboard sound is gutsy and the riff is as strong as any Ray Charles or AC/DC intro you can name. Words start, singer can sing, what's the problem? Why is it that by the end of only two and half minutes I've already switched off? It's the keyboards. The cunt wants a solo on everything. Is he the only guy that can? Or is he the only guy who _thinks_ he can? If you don't have players who are adept at soloing then don't put solos in your fucking songs. Play to your strengths.
The keyboard solo on this is pitifully inept. He insists on using this high reedy organ noise that passes thru my ears like a knitting needle doused in drain cleaner. He then just stabs hamfistedly at the keyboard or plays these widdly widdly patterns - they're not even runs - just very small 3-5 note things that are normally used as ad hoc ornaments to embellish a wider tune.
On Soul Kitchen, he keeps jabbing away at the keys like as if he's got nothing to say but feels he has to talk to be present. He keeps doing this while there's a guitar solo going on that I can't hear cuz he's playing an accompaniment with a soloing voice and it's too loud in the mix. It's just fucking atrocious.
So much for my restraint but barely six minutes in and I'm already on the edge of rage. The Crystal Ship is only bearable cuz it's a piano solo not that infernal organ but it is at least a track I sort of like all the way thru.
Another couple of songs in and I realise I've been sold a pup on the vocals as well. He can sing in that he has a strong voice but he doesn't actually have any feel for key. This is why when he begins any tune, he's coming in on the same note (relatively speaking).
Light My Fire is no exception. Quite aside from it being a strained and eventually awkward trip thru the rhyming dictionary, that good old minor third vocal is hammered well and truly into the ground so far you'd have a better chance of finding Keith Bennett. The keyboard intro is proficient and tuneful and the mix is okay but then it goes into that extended instrumental section and keyboard solo (which I'm sure everyone is familiar with) and I'm just ready to peel, chop and cook these motherfuckers.
And it doesn't let up. The latter half of this flagrant blasphemy of any musical term applied to it continues to needle my brain with that clingy, wittering girlfriend of a sound from Back Door Man all the way to Take It As It Comes.
The definition of ambivalence is the relief I felt knowing I was on the last track and the realisation that it is eleven minutes and forty three seconds long.
Its title, "The End" is dripping with irony, for it seems not to have one. After about two and a half minutes of Morrison's directionless moaning, the guitar attempts a sitar impression that more readily puts me in mind to check him for signs of a stroke. By four minutes, I am on the verge of tears. The drums are doing the most work. They are at least staying in time. The twat on the keyboard is just aimlessly wiping his fingers across the keys with no real care or attention to what the drummer is doing. The bass player could be unconscious for all we know. Over all this, Morrison defies all rhythm, meter, tone and expression with words I don't even want to listen to. You know when you hate someone so much and every word they speak just makes you want to smash their stupid face in with the nearest thing that weighs more than a shoe?
Eight minutes forty. Drums speed up. Do not kid yourself into thinking this will somehow cause the remaining three minutes to pass any more quickly. The piece comes to a cataclysmic crescendo at ten minutes and should stop there. But Morrison comes back in with one more verse. Couldn't tell you if it's a repeat of the first or not cuz I'm sitting in a pool of my own piss right now, waiting to be sectioned.
Thursday, July 09, 2015
#0092: Frank Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
Okay, let's get this done with the minimum of fuss. I don't have any issues with this, really. It's perfectly pleasant dinner music but giving it your full attention is a big ask for more than one track. That's cuz it's all the same.
All the same elegant orchestrations, all the same lugubrious vocals from Frank Albert Sinatra and, when he shows up, all the same breathy, Latina vocals from Antonio Carlos Jobim. All the same clutch pinch chord picking in that slow bossa style.
It's beautiful. You can stick it on and drift away. You can love it. It can be your desert island disc. But I defy you to have the energy to rave about this album. It seems unkind to call it boring cuz it is so....well, nice. But boring is what it is. Nice/boring.
"So what do you think of that Sinatra album with the Latin dude?"
"Well, it starts off with the Girl From Ipanema and has this--"
"Nah - just gimme the elevator pitch."
"Okay. Yeah, you could play it in an elevator."
All the same elegant orchestrations, all the same lugubrious vocals from Frank Albert Sinatra and, when he shows up, all the same breathy, Latina vocals from Antonio Carlos Jobim. All the same clutch pinch chord picking in that slow bossa style.
It's beautiful. You can stick it on and drift away. You can love it. It can be your desert island disc. But I defy you to have the energy to rave about this album. It seems unkind to call it boring cuz it is so....well, nice. But boring is what it is. Nice/boring.
"So what do you think of that Sinatra album with the Latin dude?"
"Well, it starts off with the Girl From Ipanema and has this--"
"Nah - just gimme the elevator pitch."
"Okay. Yeah, you could play it in an elevator."
#0091: The Velvet Underground & Nico []
Nico? This Nico? Why do I get the feeling this is gonna be a looooong 40 odd minutes?
It begins with a hangover. Okay, Sunday Morning's lyrics don't explicitly cite nausea, headache and suicidal thoughts but it's Sunday morning, for the sake of a fuck. The twinkly keyboard works better for me if I'm thinking about doing the walk of shame on deserted streets under a cloud of bewilderment.
I'm Waiting For The Man is possibly the most famous Velvet Underground song. Whether that's cuz it's their best or cuz it's about waiting for a drug dealer, I couldn't possibly say, but here it is and it's good to be reminded. Vanessa Paradis covered this in the 90s and her version was the first I'd ever heard. The original is dirtier, more like a scummy crackhead, tense and itchy, twitching on a street corner. But I do prefer Paradis's.
Conversely, the original version of Femme Fatale is the one I favour over the Duran Duran cover. What's more notable is that Nico does the vocal. But her listless, slightly flat singing, achieved thru apathy rather than failure, is perfect for this material. It's a crazy, mixed up world, alright.
Three tracks in and I'm feeling hopeful this could be a keeper. But these hopes are immediately dashed by the constipated straining of Venus In Furs. This is followed by an attempt at roadhouse blues called Run Run Run that fails on the first change. Seeing the chance to form a trilogy of horror, Nico then dives in on vocal with All Tomorrow's Parties; a song whose travesty of an arrangement is outshone only by the breeze-block-down-a-lift-shaft vocal.
If that's not enough, I'm then treated to a 7 minute pedicure with a rusty pliers called Heroin. Never did it myself. Had a cup of opium tea once, tho. It was mellow but I didn't like it. I was bored and there was nothing I could do about that even if I wanted to. Yet Reed extols its virtues with evangelistic nihilism.
"'Cause when the smack begins to flow
And I really don't care anymore
Ah, when that heroin is n my blood
And that blood is in my head
Then thank God that I'm as good as dead
And thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
Oh, and I guess I just don't know"
All this you'd think would go against a dull, samey acoustic strumming pattern that's not too taxing for your average smackhead. Instead it's all clanging and shrieking violins. Kids, beware. Don't take drugs cuz it only leads to shitty music.
There She Goes Again is a fucking awful tune but after Heroin, it's a refreshing lift. Nico returns on I'll Be Your Mirror and for the most part, it's pleasant but as soon as she hits a note longer than half a second[1] it just spasms out of tune like a moment of eye contact that goes on too long and gets weird.
The Black Angel's Death Song is Dylanesque with its atonal, conversational vocal but that's not being completely fair to Dylan. His accompaniments are half decent. The violin on this sounds like somebody has its family hostage and is playing under duress.
The finale, European Son is almost 8 minutes of the most godawful racket. I think the engineer must've either gone for a shit or just killed himself, leaving these completely cunted reprobates to their own devices with the tape running. It's a fucking outrage that anyone should be allowed to make a noise like this at all, let alone have it recorded and then mass produced. Was this track part of the Cold War? Did the communists think they could infiltrate the West by concealing messages in this?
Shit. There's still a minute and a half of it left and I just want to die. This is absolutely unbearable. Fuck. Ing. HELL! Who _are_ these _cunts_? I would rather have the hairs individually tweezed from the between the cheeks of my arse than hear this. I was gonna give it two stars for the good tracks but I don't wanna run the risk of someone else hearing the rest. No, giving this a rating would be like leaving broken glass on the playground floor.
[1] - you can't use technical terms like quaver or crotchet to describe actual duration, obviously.
The Black Angel's Death Song is Dylanesque with its atonal, conversational vocal but that's not being completely fair to Dylan. His accompaniments are half decent. The violin on this sounds like somebody has its family hostage and is playing under duress.
The finale, European Son is almost 8 minutes of the most godawful racket. I think the engineer must've either gone for a shit or just killed himself, leaving these completely cunted reprobates to their own devices with the tape running. It's a fucking outrage that anyone should be allowed to make a noise like this at all, let alone have it recorded and then mass produced. Was this track part of the Cold War? Did the communists think they could infiltrate the West by concealing messages in this?
Shit. There's still a minute and a half of it left and I just want to die. This is absolutely unbearable. Fuck. Ing. HELL! Who _are_ these _cunts_? I would rather have the hairs individually tweezed from the between the cheeks of my arse than hear this. I was gonna give it two stars for the good tracks but I don't wanna run the risk of someone else hearing the rest. No, giving this a rating would be like leaving broken glass on the playground floor.
[1] - you can't use technical terms like quaver or crotchet to describe actual duration, obviously.
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
#0090: The Who - Sell Out [***]
I am a fan of The Who insomuch as my brother was obsessed with the Tommy film when it came out. He had a compilation album called The Story of The Who and that had all the biggies from the back catalogue. I don't remember him having anything pre 1970 tho. It was just Quadrophenia, Tommy, The Kids Are Alright. So those are what I know.
This I'd never heard. It's a cheeky little album. In between the songs there are these radio jingle parodies and the album actually opens with one - sort of. It put a smile on my face immediately.
It is no surprise to me to discover that when the songs start, they have memorable melodies, an infectious nature on the grooves and that driving momentum on the rockier tracks. The band have their own distinct harmonic sound that is clearly distinguishable from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, etc and that's only one of the things that puts The Who in the rundown of Greatest Bands Of All Time.
There is that quintessential Who-ness about all of the songs that makes me feel like I already know them. Tattoo, for example is reminiscent of I'm A Boy but if you played them next to each other, you wouldn't say they sounded the same. At all.
Exactly on the halfway mark, the bar gets kicked up a good few notches. Even on compilations, I Can See For Miles is a stand out track. I don't know if it was an experiment staying on the same note and finding all the chords that harmonised it but it provides a thrilling crescendo for the already trademark, chuckachangtastic verses dripping with those confrontational lyrics. The song manages to keep raising the peak up to a harmonic finale that just knocks me senseless.
But if you thought the bar was set too high, that impudent jingle pops in and relieves the tension. Devious bastards!
After this point, tho it does get a bit samey. There's nothing wrong with the songs that a few more listens won't fix but this is about first reactions. The latter half just isn't as strong. Medac is another of those faux advertisements but it's too long and feels more like a song they (he?) was unable to finish and so they just dumped it on here disguised as a joke.
Silas Stingy is just stupid but it has the words "there goes mingey stingey" in it so, y'no, there's that.
I'm relieved they dropped the gimmicks for the last two tracks. Sunrise is an exquisite piece. I dare say there's a few guitarists who have focused their attention on cracking this one with as much wide eyed ambition as Blackbird or Never Going Back Again.
It was lumpy there for a bit but we've got to the last track in pretty good shape. Rael 1 is sort of a surreal bit of social commentary as a miniature epic, to coin an oxymoron. It didn't start well for me, but then it picks up considerably and I'm sure the riffs used he then went on to deploy in Tommy. Amazing Journey? Yet I don't feel critical of that. It's like watching Better Call Saul and hearing him say "S'all good man."
Yeah, this is a tidy album but it's not a four.
This I'd never heard. It's a cheeky little album. In between the songs there are these radio jingle parodies and the album actually opens with one - sort of. It put a smile on my face immediately.
It is no surprise to me to discover that when the songs start, they have memorable melodies, an infectious nature on the grooves and that driving momentum on the rockier tracks. The band have their own distinct harmonic sound that is clearly distinguishable from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, etc and that's only one of the things that puts The Who in the rundown of Greatest Bands Of All Time.
There is that quintessential Who-ness about all of the songs that makes me feel like I already know them. Tattoo, for example is reminiscent of I'm A Boy but if you played them next to each other, you wouldn't say they sounded the same. At all.
Exactly on the halfway mark, the bar gets kicked up a good few notches. Even on compilations, I Can See For Miles is a stand out track. I don't know if it was an experiment staying on the same note and finding all the chords that harmonised it but it provides a thrilling crescendo for the already trademark, chuckachangtastic verses dripping with those confrontational lyrics. The song manages to keep raising the peak up to a harmonic finale that just knocks me senseless.
But if you thought the bar was set too high, that impudent jingle pops in and relieves the tension. Devious bastards!
After this point, tho it does get a bit samey. There's nothing wrong with the songs that a few more listens won't fix but this is about first reactions. The latter half just isn't as strong. Medac is another of those faux advertisements but it's too long and feels more like a song they (he?) was unable to finish and so they just dumped it on here disguised as a joke.
Silas Stingy is just stupid but it has the words "there goes mingey stingey" in it so, y'no, there's that.
I'm relieved they dropped the gimmicks for the last two tracks. Sunrise is an exquisite piece. I dare say there's a few guitarists who have focused their attention on cracking this one with as much wide eyed ambition as Blackbird or Never Going Back Again.
It was lumpy there for a bit but we've got to the last track in pretty good shape. Rael 1 is sort of a surreal bit of social commentary as a miniature epic, to coin an oxymoron. It didn't start well for me, but then it picks up considerably and I'm sure the riffs used he then went on to deploy in Tommy. Amazing Journey? Yet I don't feel critical of that. It's like watching Better Call Saul and hearing him say "S'all good man."
Yeah, this is a tidy album but it's not a four.
#0089: Pink Floyd - A Piper At The Gates Of Dawn [****]
To me, Pink Floyd are Schrodinger's Band. And in more than one way. The music is both awe-inspiring genius and whimsical drug-addled shite. The men are both the elder statesmen of psychedelic rock and a clutch of bickering teenage girls. The moment I discovered them was both in my childhood and my decadent 20s.
When I was around 9 or 10, I suppose, I found my brother's cassette copy of Dark Side Of The Moon. It had fallen down the back.of.the MFI unit where our parents kept their "music centre". The labels had been torn off both sides so I didnt know what it was. I didnt say anything to my brother about it. I'd found another tape back there some months previously - Tubular Bells - and had been listening to.it.regularly. I don't wanna get into it but he didn't take kindly to.my.finders keepers approach to.the situation. The tape had been.lost.for.years. It was.covered.in dust when I found it. Anyway, that was the possibly the first time I'd heard Pink Floyd.
I've wanted to point this out for quite some considerable time but I decided to wait until now cuz I suspect Floyd are the first band most people would name in connection with Psychedelic Rock. The word psychedelic, actually means "to manifest the soul". Yet, if you had asked me a week or two ago to define it, I would've said "to dress, draw or play music that makes people think you're on drugs, even if you're not."
I discovered the definition in an article I read recently. The article was about a scientist - Dr something (that oughta narrow your list of scientists down) - who is conducting LSD trials for the first time in decades as a possible treatment for schizophrenia, depression, anxiety etc. Some would argue using LSD to solve mental health problems is like fixing an ingrowing toenail by cutting one's leg off. But I digress.
This is the first album by one of my favourite bands of all time. I wanna be able to bestow upon it glory and honour, endow it with healing and magical powers. I want to. But for all my ageing hippy bluster, my taste just isn't that psychedelic. So, remember that.
Astronomy Domine is one of those tracks that gets[1] trotted out to please the Syd Barrett devotees and perpetuate this loyalty to their fallen comrade. A mate of mine thinks it's all a fallacy that Syd did too much acid, spun out and lived out his days as a basket case in his mum's basement. This report was perhaps exaggerated but he was a recluse and he did live with his mum and sure as hell consumed a metric fuck tonne of lysergic acid diethylamide during his comparatively brief time with the band.
He had a definite penchant for chromatic chord changes that slide eerily along and together with his distinctive English singing accent, he created an undeniably unique sound. To be singing about star formations and planets and tying those in with emotional themes is certainly something I've not heard while listening to these albums. The melodies are beautiful and the lyrics interesting but the extended space sequences even in a tiny song like Flaming lose me completely.
On Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk we've got a much more rock-centred piece, which contains a keyboard solo of sorts. Richard Wright, not a fancy player by any stretch of the imagination was perhaps ill advised to go for the Jon Lord (and those of his ilk) runs but perhaps he was not aware of his strengths at this point. It would be several years before Dark Side of the Moon would give him one of the most iconic piano introductions in the history of Rock.
Interstellar Overdrive is another that stayed in the band's set right up to their last tour. It's the epic of the album; a 9 minute holocaust[2] of chaotic discord. Most of it you can shove up your arse as far as I'm concerned. It is the most unequivocally shit thing I have ever had the good fortune to fall asleep in. But the main theme, once again built on a chromatic descent, is extraordinarily powerful. If you can imagine yourself going on a journey through space - like when they go thru the wormhole in the film, Interstellar[3] - you are voyaging through the unknown and many strange things will occur and at the end you would not be the same. Cleverly, when the theme returns at the end of this albeit deliberately cacophonous wank, it is itself twisted somewhat - revealing, perhaps, the intended narrative.
There are a few more great ideas in The Gnome and Chapter 24, cluttered by the bloody bonkers sound effects but thankfully the songs are short enough that not much perseverance is required to get to the ingenious harmony work that climaxes on Scarecrow. I'd say this song was the album's peak for me but it can't be.
It can't be because this album closes with Bike. Bike is silly. Bike is innocent. Bike is eccentric in tune and lyric. Bike is anthemic with its rallentando and recovery after the change. When I first heard this knowing I was listening to Pink Floyd, I nearly cried. I had been singing this song from when I was a small boy, thinking it was one of the many daft things my brother had made up to entertain me, the small, pink, bull-in-a-china-shop who came into his life when he was half way to his ninth birthday. It seems, I'd found his tape of Dark Side of the Moon but never his tape of Relics, a compilation that included this song, released shortly before the stunning Meddle in 1971. So, it appears the first Pink Floyd I ever heard wasn't DSOTM but Bike.
Much of the album sounds like a collection of kitchen hardware going round in a cement mixer. It has merits, but these can't lift it any further than 3 for me. Nevertheless, Bike is a big emotional trigger for me so I have to give it one more. Just for my ridiculous big brother.
[1] - should be past tense. I don't see Floyd touring again.
[2] - oh fuck off. holocaust - noun: an act of great destruction and loss of life.
[3] - why didn't they use this in the soundtrack?
When I was around 9 or 10, I suppose, I found my brother's cassette copy of Dark Side Of The Moon. It had fallen down the back.of.the MFI unit where our parents kept their "music centre". The labels had been torn off both sides so I didnt know what it was. I didnt say anything to my brother about it. I'd found another tape back there some months previously - Tubular Bells - and had been listening to.it.regularly. I don't wanna get into it but he didn't take kindly to.my.finders keepers approach to.the situation. The tape had been.lost.for.years. It was.covered.in dust when I found it. Anyway, that was the possibly the first time I'd heard Pink Floyd.
I've wanted to point this out for quite some considerable time but I decided to wait until now cuz I suspect Floyd are the first band most people would name in connection with Psychedelic Rock. The word psychedelic, actually means "to manifest the soul". Yet, if you had asked me a week or two ago to define it, I would've said "to dress, draw or play music that makes people think you're on drugs, even if you're not."
I discovered the definition in an article I read recently. The article was about a scientist - Dr something (that oughta narrow your list of scientists down) - who is conducting LSD trials for the first time in decades as a possible treatment for schizophrenia, depression, anxiety etc. Some would argue using LSD to solve mental health problems is like fixing an ingrowing toenail by cutting one's leg off. But I digress.
This is the first album by one of my favourite bands of all time. I wanna be able to bestow upon it glory and honour, endow it with healing and magical powers. I want to. But for all my ageing hippy bluster, my taste just isn't that psychedelic. So, remember that.
Astronomy Domine is one of those tracks that gets[1] trotted out to please the Syd Barrett devotees and perpetuate this loyalty to their fallen comrade. A mate of mine thinks it's all a fallacy that Syd did too much acid, spun out and lived out his days as a basket case in his mum's basement. This report was perhaps exaggerated but he was a recluse and he did live with his mum and sure as hell consumed a metric fuck tonne of lysergic acid diethylamide during his comparatively brief time with the band.
He had a definite penchant for chromatic chord changes that slide eerily along and together with his distinctive English singing accent, he created an undeniably unique sound. To be singing about star formations and planets and tying those in with emotional themes is certainly something I've not heard while listening to these albums. The melodies are beautiful and the lyrics interesting but the extended space sequences even in a tiny song like Flaming lose me completely.
On Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk we've got a much more rock-centred piece, which contains a keyboard solo of sorts. Richard Wright, not a fancy player by any stretch of the imagination was perhaps ill advised to go for the Jon Lord (and those of his ilk) runs but perhaps he was not aware of his strengths at this point. It would be several years before Dark Side of the Moon would give him one of the most iconic piano introductions in the history of Rock.
Interstellar Overdrive is another that stayed in the band's set right up to their last tour. It's the epic of the album; a 9 minute holocaust[2] of chaotic discord. Most of it you can shove up your arse as far as I'm concerned. It is the most unequivocally shit thing I have ever had the good fortune to fall asleep in. But the main theme, once again built on a chromatic descent, is extraordinarily powerful. If you can imagine yourself going on a journey through space - like when they go thru the wormhole in the film, Interstellar[3] - you are voyaging through the unknown and many strange things will occur and at the end you would not be the same. Cleverly, when the theme returns at the end of this albeit deliberately cacophonous wank, it is itself twisted somewhat - revealing, perhaps, the intended narrative.
There are a few more great ideas in The Gnome and Chapter 24, cluttered by the bloody bonkers sound effects but thankfully the songs are short enough that not much perseverance is required to get to the ingenious harmony work that climaxes on Scarecrow. I'd say this song was the album's peak for me but it can't be.
It can't be because this album closes with Bike. Bike is silly. Bike is innocent. Bike is eccentric in tune and lyric. Bike is anthemic with its rallentando and recovery after the change. When I first heard this knowing I was listening to Pink Floyd, I nearly cried. I had been singing this song from when I was a small boy, thinking it was one of the many daft things my brother had made up to entertain me, the small, pink, bull-in-a-china-shop who came into his life when he was half way to his ninth birthday. It seems, I'd found his tape of Dark Side of the Moon but never his tape of Relics, a compilation that included this song, released shortly before the stunning Meddle in 1971. So, it appears the first Pink Floyd I ever heard wasn't DSOTM but Bike.
Much of the album sounds like a collection of kitchen hardware going round in a cement mixer. It has merits, but these can't lift it any further than 3 for me. Nevertheless, Bike is a big emotional trigger for me so I have to give it one more. Just for my ridiculous big brother.
[1] - should be past tense. I don't see Floyd touring again.
[2] - oh fuck off. holocaust - noun: an act of great destruction and loss of life.
[3] - why didn't they use this in the soundtrack?
Sunday, June 28, 2015
#0088: Cream - Disraeli Gears [****]
Fucking iTunes.
The MP3 files I sync'd with my iPod didn't have the track numbers filled in so iTunes order the files alphabetically instead of by the original filenames, resulting in me listening to the album in the wrong order.
I have now rectified the situation but most of my notes are now irrelevant. So I have to listen to it again.
I once owned a cassette tape of The Cream of Eric Clapton. I didn't choose to buy it. I was sent it by one of those mail order music catalogues and forgot to send it back so I was stuck with it. I never once listened to it all the way thru. I would fall asleep. I'd get lost in my thoughts. I've actually written other songs while that tape was playing. Not that it was shit. Blues just has to be truly special to hold my attention for longer than a few minutes.
Two of the tracks off that compilation are on this so I'm expecting three things from this album. (1) Addictive riffs (2) fine solo work and (3) to lose concentration often.
When it was in the wrong order I praised it for underplaying the opening and leaving the two belters until later. Meanwhile back in the real world, the first two tracks are _those_ two tracks. I won't say much about them. They're very well known and in some cases, so well known as for that to be detrimental.
Strange Brew is a staple for Halloween parties and together with Sunshine Of Your Love these whorey old standards have littered the set lists of pub covers bands since time immemorial. Well, immemorial to me, at least. So let's move on, although do check out Spanky Wilson's version of Sunshine Of Your Love. It's pretty spesh.
So instead of the daring beginning, we've got the best stuff up front with its tits out and if I hadn't already heard it I'd be thinking whatever's coming next has its work cut out. World Of Pain however, is unfazed by its task. It has that feel I associate with Ramble On, but it's slinkier: not the ball-searing anthem of transients the Led would scream for us years later. I fucking love this track. I'm gonna listen to it again.
Okay, _now_ they're struggling. Nothing can follow that. Dance The Night Away has a softer feel, playing to the plaintive side of the minor key. It's pretty quick nonetheless and keeping the pace up is the only move they have. There's this tinny, might-be-a mandolin on there? Annoying. If it was just trying to hold the fort until the next belter then job done but as Blue Condition shows, it's more the evidence of decline than the provision of variety. Blue Condition is sung by someone else I think. It's a very basic blues, not without its charm, but only time will tell if it becomes a blessing or a burden.
Tales Of Brave Ulysses is a harbinger of progressive rock, I think, both in the almost rubato prologue and the generally Gothic lyrics with the classical theme. It's still basically White Room once it kicks in but it has higher ideals that while a little pretentious are well executed. And that's the difference between good and a bit shit for not just prog but glam and musical theatre and probably some others too.
It feels distinctly like SWLABR is the opening of side two. A big instrumental tag that bookends every verse, led by what I think is a very compressed guitar gives way to another of those couldn-t-give-a-nutsack grooves but each carries with it an edge. Another song that's going to grow on me even more so, I think.
In the words of Simon Le Bon, "Oh my god, what's this?"
We're Going Wrong is an attempt at an ethereal, atmospheric kinda thing I think. It's some kinda warning, probably about society, lyrically could be anything. Builds up to a crescendo, doesn't go on too long, doesn't really earn its vinyl.
Outside Woman Blues gets us back on track tho. What the fuck, guys? There's this repeating riff at the end of every single line and you'd think you'd get bored of it but it's such a tasty tune, you sing along with it and then he starts harmonising with it. Just great.
Take It Back is the roadhouse blues I'd been expecting the entire album and it's every bit as pedestrian as you might expect. Not bad. You can even enjoy it. But it's not exciting. Let's move on to the last track, which is the band showing they've got a sick and weird sense of humour.
Mother's Lament is sung in full on mockney and tells the tale of a woman who didn't throw her baby out with the bath water. It was so thin, it went down the plughole. Nice vaudeville piano on and I bet they had a right laugh recording it. Leaves you with a smile on your face. Yeah....I'm coming back to this often, in spite of the shit ones.
The MP3 files I sync'd with my iPod didn't have the track numbers filled in so iTunes order the files alphabetically instead of by the original filenames, resulting in me listening to the album in the wrong order.
I have now rectified the situation but most of my notes are now irrelevant. So I have to listen to it again.
I once owned a cassette tape of The Cream of Eric Clapton. I didn't choose to buy it. I was sent it by one of those mail order music catalogues and forgot to send it back so I was stuck with it. I never once listened to it all the way thru. I would fall asleep. I'd get lost in my thoughts. I've actually written other songs while that tape was playing. Not that it was shit. Blues just has to be truly special to hold my attention for longer than a few minutes.
Two of the tracks off that compilation are on this so I'm expecting three things from this album. (1) Addictive riffs (2) fine solo work and (3) to lose concentration often.
When it was in the wrong order I praised it for underplaying the opening and leaving the two belters until later. Meanwhile back in the real world, the first two tracks are _those_ two tracks. I won't say much about them. They're very well known and in some cases, so well known as for that to be detrimental.
Strange Brew is a staple for Halloween parties and together with Sunshine Of Your Love these whorey old standards have littered the set lists of pub covers bands since time immemorial. Well, immemorial to me, at least. So let's move on, although do check out Spanky Wilson's version of Sunshine Of Your Love. It's pretty spesh.
So instead of the daring beginning, we've got the best stuff up front with its tits out and if I hadn't already heard it I'd be thinking whatever's coming next has its work cut out. World Of Pain however, is unfazed by its task. It has that feel I associate with Ramble On, but it's slinkier: not the ball-searing anthem of transients the Led would scream for us years later. I fucking love this track. I'm gonna listen to it again.
Okay, _now_ they're struggling. Nothing can follow that. Dance The Night Away has a softer feel, playing to the plaintive side of the minor key. It's pretty quick nonetheless and keeping the pace up is the only move they have. There's this tinny, might-be-a mandolin on there? Annoying. If it was just trying to hold the fort until the next belter then job done but as Blue Condition shows, it's more the evidence of decline than the provision of variety. Blue Condition is sung by someone else I think. It's a very basic blues, not without its charm, but only time will tell if it becomes a blessing or a burden.
Tales Of Brave Ulysses is a harbinger of progressive rock, I think, both in the almost rubato prologue and the generally Gothic lyrics with the classical theme. It's still basically White Room once it kicks in but it has higher ideals that while a little pretentious are well executed. And that's the difference between good and a bit shit for not just prog but glam and musical theatre and probably some others too.
In the words of Simon Le Bon, "Oh my god, what's this?"
We're Going Wrong is an attempt at an ethereal, atmospheric kinda thing I think. It's some kinda warning, probably about society, lyrically could be anything. Builds up to a crescendo, doesn't go on too long, doesn't really earn its vinyl.
Outside Woman Blues gets us back on track tho. What the fuck, guys? There's this repeating riff at the end of every single line and you'd think you'd get bored of it but it's such a tasty tune, you sing along with it and then he starts harmonising with it. Just great.
Take It Back is the roadhouse blues I'd been expecting the entire album and it's every bit as pedestrian as you might expect. Not bad. You can even enjoy it. But it's not exciting. Let's move on to the last track, which is the band showing they've got a sick and weird sense of humour.
Mother's Lament is sung in full on mockney and tells the tale of a woman who didn't throw her baby out with the bath water. It was so thin, it went down the plughole. Nice vaudeville piano on and I bet they had a right laugh recording it. Leaves you with a smile on your face. Yeah....I'm coming back to this often, in spite of the shit ones.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
#0087: Love - Forever Changes [*]
Second album by this band very soon after the first. I didn't really understand why that record was on the list so I'm extremely dubious about what this has in store for me.
It opens up with Alone Again, going for the sharp contrast between an instrumental acoustic guitar with heavy reverb suddenly bursting with orchestral support for the hook part of this verse verse format. There's a spaghetti western trumpet solo in there that reminds me of Tom Jones for some reason. Weird, but certainly better than that last shower of shit.
Predictably, though, the second track, A House Is Not A Motel, shows signs of slipping back. There's a brave key change for the chorus but the accompaniment doesn't follow with enough gusto and he just sounds out of tune. It's trashy, fast hipster groove with hard rock instruments and a second go round reveals it wasn't a key change. Oh dear.
Andmoreagain: see what they did there? They pushed all the words together like a domain name. Edgy, huh? Sadly that's the only thing about this that could be described as ahead of its time. His voice is reminding me of Carol Decker (singer with T'Pau). Sings fine about 70% of the time then goes a bit pitchy and comes back in. Repeat that a couple of times before landing squarely flat on a long, high note and instead of correcting it, bottling it - or, god forbid, doing another fucking take - just holds this flat note in the hope people will think it's deliberate or else blame themselves for hearing it wrong.
"Keep smiling and call it jazz" only works for jazz, dickhead.
On and on we lurch from track to track in search of greatness that never comes.
The Daily Planet - surprise, it's got nothing to do with Superman. It's very reminiscent of The Who - a mix of Magic Bus and I'm A Boy, perhaps. The intro is a stomp but then turns into that generic 60s beat with the syncopated snare. It's a perfectly decent song but lacking the magic.
Old Man could be a secret tribute to some father figure. A couple more of listens might reveal its sacred beauty but for now it passes by almost unnoticed.
The Red Telephone is searching for a progression to do the job of melody. It's struggling to be interesting and you could argue we have that in common but at least it's trying. The anachronistic pseudo rap at the end is pretty naff though and is an admission of defeat.
Live And Let Live. Six years later a title playing on this axiom would become an all time classic. No such future for this bland sojourn in a house of blunt scissors, which opens with the line "the snot has kicked against my pants". Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's a mondegreen[*] too, but still.
I'm working on a theory that if a song has more than 6 words in the title, it'll be shit[**]. And the next track, The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This, is no exception. In spite of this, there are some nice chords created by the strings and horns but not much else.
The final song, You Set The Scene, is an up beat pop song to close with more of that chromatic shift we've been seeing in the progressions throughout. But then it switches pace and goes into a different section. Ahaaa. Fancy ourselves a concept closer do we? No, you're just a cut n shut. Two songs blutacked together with no real care. The arps in the final bars are elementary school band further underlining an album trying far too hard to be something it hasn't the chops for.
[*] - this seems to be a little known fact. When words are mis-heard, as in "hold me close and tie me down, sir" and "excuse me while I kiss this guy", it's called a mondegreen. Read more about mondegreens.
[**] - One notable exception to this rule is of course When The World Is Running Down You Make The Best Of What's Still Around.
It opens up with Alone Again, going for the sharp contrast between an instrumental acoustic guitar with heavy reverb suddenly bursting with orchestral support for the hook part of this verse verse format. There's a spaghetti western trumpet solo in there that reminds me of Tom Jones for some reason. Weird, but certainly better than that last shower of shit.
Predictably, though, the second track, A House Is Not A Motel, shows signs of slipping back. There's a brave key change for the chorus but the accompaniment doesn't follow with enough gusto and he just sounds out of tune. It's trashy, fast hipster groove with hard rock instruments and a second go round reveals it wasn't a key change. Oh dear.
Andmoreagain: see what they did there? They pushed all the words together like a domain name. Edgy, huh? Sadly that's the only thing about this that could be described as ahead of its time. His voice is reminding me of Carol Decker (singer with T'Pau). Sings fine about 70% of the time then goes a bit pitchy and comes back in. Repeat that a couple of times before landing squarely flat on a long, high note and instead of correcting it, bottling it - or, god forbid, doing another fucking take - just holds this flat note in the hope people will think it's deliberate or else blame themselves for hearing it wrong.
"Keep smiling and call it jazz" only works for jazz, dickhead.
On and on we lurch from track to track in search of greatness that never comes.
The Daily Planet - surprise, it's got nothing to do with Superman. It's very reminiscent of The Who - a mix of Magic Bus and I'm A Boy, perhaps. The intro is a stomp but then turns into that generic 60s beat with the syncopated snare. It's a perfectly decent song but lacking the magic.
Old Man could be a secret tribute to some father figure. A couple more of listens might reveal its sacred beauty but for now it passes by almost unnoticed.
The Red Telephone is searching for a progression to do the job of melody. It's struggling to be interesting and you could argue we have that in common but at least it's trying. The anachronistic pseudo rap at the end is pretty naff though and is an admission of defeat.
Live And Let Live. Six years later a title playing on this axiom would become an all time classic. No such future for this bland sojourn in a house of blunt scissors, which opens with the line "the snot has kicked against my pants". Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's a mondegreen[*] too, but still.
I'm working on a theory that if a song has more than 6 words in the title, it'll be shit[**]. And the next track, The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This, is no exception. In spite of this, there are some nice chords created by the strings and horns but not much else.
The final song, You Set The Scene, is an up beat pop song to close with more of that chromatic shift we've been seeing in the progressions throughout. But then it switches pace and goes into a different section. Ahaaa. Fancy ourselves a concept closer do we? No, you're just a cut n shut. Two songs blutacked together with no real care. The arps in the final bars are elementary school band further underlining an album trying far too hard to be something it hasn't the chops for.
[*] - this seems to be a little known fact. When words are mis-heard, as in "hold me close and tie me down, sir" and "excuse me while I kiss this guy", it's called a mondegreen. Read more about mondegreens.
[**] - One notable exception to this rule is of course When The World Is Running Down You Make The Best Of What's Still Around.
#0086: Tim Buckley - Goodbye And Hello [*]
I'm just gonna come right out and say it. This guy's voice is just plain weird. There's a vocal range in the opera world called Counter Tenor my dad told me about. He says the voice gives him the willies cuz it doesn't sound like a man. Now, the latent trans/homophobia aside, I can see his point. It's like you can hear that a bloke's larynx is making that noise but it's too high a register so it sounds like it's been processed or sped up or something.
Tim Buckley is definitely on that spectrum but there's another texture to it too. It's like he's closing this throat to do a silly voice like the nerdy ones in Monty Python sketches likes Bookshop.
Outside the issues with his voice, there are two consistent qualities running through this. One is the melodies all seem to be around the same pattern and the other is the repeated use of a loosely strung acoustic guitar that gradually becomes more and more chaotic as the song progresses.
I Never Asked To Be Your Mount is a great example of this ruining an otherwise decent piece. He could've been done at 4 minutes but he pushes it too far, creates this cacophony again and then starts taking risks with his vocal range that come off sounding like Bobcat Goldthwaite in a spin cycle.
Knight Errant is the only one I really liked from start to finish but then it's just under 2 minutes long and has a genuinely interesting progression.
All of these criticisms notwithstanding, it's just about bearable until the title track begins. There's nothing particularly foreboding about it other than the tired old melody and the tired old descending bass but a glance at the i-Tunes window tells me this track is nearly 9 minutes long. Every 2 or 3 minutes, there's a break in the repetitive dirge of a few bars of double tempo that promises relief but then pulls the rug out and returns to the land of gimme-the-scissors.
Why does everybody think they're the ones who are gonna get it right? They're gonna write the extended song that doesn't go anywhere or do anything that will blow people's minds. The fuck they are.
Tim Buckley is definitely on that spectrum but there's another texture to it too. It's like he's closing this throat to do a silly voice like the nerdy ones in Monty Python sketches likes Bookshop.
Outside the issues with his voice, there are two consistent qualities running through this. One is the melodies all seem to be around the same pattern and the other is the repeated use of a loosely strung acoustic guitar that gradually becomes more and more chaotic as the song progresses.
I Never Asked To Be Your Mount is a great example of this ruining an otherwise decent piece. He could've been done at 4 minutes but he pushes it too far, creates this cacophony again and then starts taking risks with his vocal range that come off sounding like Bobcat Goldthwaite in a spin cycle.
Knight Errant is the only one I really liked from start to finish but then it's just under 2 minutes long and has a genuinely interesting progression.
All of these criticisms notwithstanding, it's just about bearable until the title track begins. There's nothing particularly foreboding about it other than the tired old melody and the tired old descending bass but a glance at the i-Tunes window tells me this track is nearly 9 minutes long. Every 2 or 3 minutes, there's a break in the repetitive dirge of a few bars of double tempo that promises relief but then pulls the rug out and returns to the land of gimme-the-scissors.
Why does everybody think they're the ones who are gonna get it right? They're gonna write the extended song that doesn't go anywhere or do anything that will blow people's minds. The fuck they are.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
#0085: The Monkees - Headquarters [*]
I don't know how The Monkees were formed. I seem to remember hearing somewhere they fashioned by the industry rather than being discovered by it. The Spice Girls of the 60s. Perhaps. I haven't checked.
I remember the theme tune and those 2 Believers: Daydream and Indefinite Article. I shouldn't be surprised they ran out of ideas so quickly.
I loved the TV show, and of course the theme, but I was never inspired to buy an album off the back of that. Good thing too. At that age this insipid piece of aural excrement would have soiled my taste for more musically worthy fair like the Zeppelin, Who, Slade, Queen and Bowie my older brother was giving me the benefit of in my listening infancy.
You Told Me is a pretty good song I suppose and the following two hold their own pretty well as long as you don't pay attention to the lyrics, whose tone smacks of that adolescent whining only the whiniest of adolescents can enjoy.
But then the album begins a descent from barely average toward total sonic sewage at the sort of gradient usually only seen on cliff edges.
For Pete's Sake could've been so much better if they'd got a session guitarist instead of the string buzzing twat embarrassing himself on this. Throughout the drummer clearly can't keep time without out the bass player. J K Simmons would've eaten this guy for breakfast and spat out the sticks.
Zilch is trying so hard to be psychedelic and they come off like a bunch of accountants trying to prove they're a fun bunch of people. Apologies to the accountants but you get a lot of stick for being boring and some of you tend to over compensate.
Littered with attempts at different styles, peppered with nods to intricacies executed well by other bands, Headquarters sounds like they're trying to prove one thing but sadly confirm the other.
I am not a believer anymore.
I remember the theme tune and those 2 Believers: Daydream and Indefinite Article. I shouldn't be surprised they ran out of ideas so quickly.
I loved the TV show, and of course the theme, but I was never inspired to buy an album off the back of that. Good thing too. At that age this insipid piece of aural excrement would have soiled my taste for more musically worthy fair like the Zeppelin, Who, Slade, Queen and Bowie my older brother was giving me the benefit of in my listening infancy.
You Told Me is a pretty good song I suppose and the following two hold their own pretty well as long as you don't pay attention to the lyrics, whose tone smacks of that adolescent whining only the whiniest of adolescents can enjoy.
But then the album begins a descent from barely average toward total sonic sewage at the sort of gradient usually only seen on cliff edges.
For Pete's Sake could've been so much better if they'd got a session guitarist instead of the string buzzing twat embarrassing himself on this. Throughout the drummer clearly can't keep time without out the bass player. J K Simmons would've eaten this guy for breakfast and spat out the sticks.
Zilch is trying so hard to be psychedelic and they come off like a bunch of accountants trying to prove they're a fun bunch of people. Apologies to the accountants but you get a lot of stick for being boring and some of you tend to over compensate.
Littered with attempts at different styles, peppered with nods to intricacies executed well by other bands, Headquarters sounds like they're trying to prove one thing but sadly confirm the other.
I am not a believer anymore.
Monday, June 22, 2015
#0084: The Beau Brummels - Triangle [****]
This is a surprising little album. The country and folk influences are clear from the outset but there's a lot more to it than diddly-twang-dicky-dido, "My mama calls me Lizbeth but I got a 3-inch-diiiick."
The songs are built on a core of acoustic guitars, accordions and violins but there are some choice decisions made with the layered orchestrations, most immediately noticeable on Only Dreaming Now. The song is one of those with no chorus, but rather a crescendo on a strongly resolving melody at the end of each verse that serves the purpose after a fashion.
The percussion is minimal, letting us hear the delicately darting strings underpinning the vocal.
When that crescendo comes, it is a sparse bass drum that enters in support of the swelling strings, not obliterating them.
The progressions too aren't your usual country standard, to which the opening track Are You Happy is testament. All the way through you get different rhythms and cadences and his voice has a rich timbre.
Now, there is a certain conversational tone to some of the words and a distinct similarity to a particular guitar-playing rodent, who by now I'm sure I need not name.
I mention this, not because it's off-putting but because the singer on this album is doing exactly that: singing. Fans of Dylan have berated me for slagging him off just because I don't understand his style. This album is my answer to those people. The vocal here is very much a-la He-With-Eyes-Like-A-Robber's-Dog but I'm enjoying it immensely.
Other conspicuously good takes found herein include The Painter Of Women, which again impresses with its arrangement, prodigious in its sparsity. The Keeper Of Time is just an old stomper, but it's full of life and that mix, that gloriously well pitched mix helps it carry you away, as indeed it should.
Watch out too for Nine Pound Hammer which is a great little groover that builds in intensity up to a frantic climax.
Most of the songs come in closer to 2 minutes than 3, so the appearance of The Wolf Of Velvet Fortune at nearly 5 minutes constitutes Progressive Rock. It's an odd song with violent changes of mood, which are a bit harsh on the ear but they ease back quickly, seemingly self aware.
It's that kind of control and attention that leave me feeling relaxed and ready for a bit of fun by the time the old hillbilly standard Old Kentucky Home kicks in as an epilogue to this, a most unexpected pleasure.
The songs are built on a core of acoustic guitars, accordions and violins but there are some choice decisions made with the layered orchestrations, most immediately noticeable on Only Dreaming Now. The song is one of those with no chorus, but rather a crescendo on a strongly resolving melody at the end of each verse that serves the purpose after a fashion.
The percussion is minimal, letting us hear the delicately darting strings underpinning the vocal.
When that crescendo comes, it is a sparse bass drum that enters in support of the swelling strings, not obliterating them.
The progressions too aren't your usual country standard, to which the opening track Are You Happy is testament. All the way through you get different rhythms and cadences and his voice has a rich timbre.
Now, there is a certain conversational tone to some of the words and a distinct similarity to a particular guitar-playing rodent, who by now I'm sure I need not name.
I mention this, not because it's off-putting but because the singer on this album is doing exactly that: singing. Fans of Dylan have berated me for slagging him off just because I don't understand his style. This album is my answer to those people. The vocal here is very much a-la He-With-Eyes-Like-A-Robber's-Dog but I'm enjoying it immensely.
Other conspicuously good takes found herein include The Painter Of Women, which again impresses with its arrangement, prodigious in its sparsity. The Keeper Of Time is just an old stomper, but it's full of life and that mix, that gloriously well pitched mix helps it carry you away, as indeed it should.
Watch out too for Nine Pound Hammer which is a great little groover that builds in intensity up to a frantic climax.
Most of the songs come in closer to 2 minutes than 3, so the appearance of The Wolf Of Velvet Fortune at nearly 5 minutes constitutes Progressive Rock. It's an odd song with violent changes of mood, which are a bit harsh on the ear but they ease back quickly, seemingly self aware.
It's that kind of control and attention that leave me feeling relaxed and ready for a bit of fun by the time the old hillbilly standard Old Kentucky Home kicks in as an epilogue to this, a most unexpected pleasure.
Friday, June 19, 2015
#0083: Love - Da Capo [*]
At 36 minutes, this is a very short album and while that's not particularly noteworthy considering the period, I mention it now, cuz it'll be important later. Consider it the Chekhov's Gun of album reviews. Pretentious? Certainly, but then so is this poor excuse of a long player that plays fast and recklessly loose with the definition of long.
I've given it a star, which tells you there is something positive I can say about it. The flute and the harpsichord are, at times, phenomenal. They're not sitting on top of much, but they're good enough to cause a lapse, however brief in the feelings of frustration the initial 6 tracks evoke.
They're so short but nevertheless create an air of being too long. If your song runs 1:18 then you have a choice. Either develop your idea properly or let it stand as is. There is a veritable fuck-tonne of short tracks that demonstrate the effectiveness of their interlude-approaching brevity. I intend to check this list out when I have more time. Most of the songs on it I've never heard and I'm more than slightly miffed that neither of the qualifying songs on Prince's Parade made the cut but the very existence of this list is proof of my point. There's nothing wrong with a short song.
They may have felt a certain obligation to breach the 3 minute boundary for the sake of radio play and the wildly ambitious notion that one of these quasi-baroque mincettas* will give them a hit. That's more likely, perhaps, than my other theory, which is that without the needless repetition, the total running time would downgrade the release to an EP.
Too often these people miss the mark with a poor choice of singer or by.jamming out a riff for too long and if the first 6 tracks didn't teach you that, then get a load of side 2.
For those who like jokes that hinge on some implicit mental arithmetic taking place, the running time so far is just over 17 minutes with one track remaining.
That's right, the final song is longer than all the previous tracks put together. Oh my tormented soul! What manner of heathen torture is this?!
Y'know "Da Capo" is a musical term, which literally translated is "from the beginning" and they certainly seem to be living up to that over and over again in this hideous extended jam of an unchanging chord sequence so impotent I would struggle to justify referring to it as a vamp let alone a progression. The singer attempts increasingly ambitious lines, which fail embarrassingly. And there is nothing at the end to conclude the song, nothing to suggest this section took us anywhere or had a destination in mind. Its only purpose was to extend the running time.
To Thirty. Six. Minutes.[**]
[*] - mincetta (p. min-chetta) n. - a short piece of music, not necessarily instrumental that is a vague composite of styles; part one, part another, but all mince.
[**] - there isn't an emoji for "derisive sneer" but if there was, this'd be where you'd find an apt usage
I've given it a star, which tells you there is something positive I can say about it. The flute and the harpsichord are, at times, phenomenal. They're not sitting on top of much, but they're good enough to cause a lapse, however brief in the feelings of frustration the initial 6 tracks evoke.
They're so short but nevertheless create an air of being too long. If your song runs 1:18 then you have a choice. Either develop your idea properly or let it stand as is. There is a veritable fuck-tonne of short tracks that demonstrate the effectiveness of their interlude-approaching brevity. I intend to check this list out when I have more time. Most of the songs on it I've never heard and I'm more than slightly miffed that neither of the qualifying songs on Prince's Parade made the cut but the very existence of this list is proof of my point. There's nothing wrong with a short song.
They may have felt a certain obligation to breach the 3 minute boundary for the sake of radio play and the wildly ambitious notion that one of these quasi-baroque mincettas* will give them a hit. That's more likely, perhaps, than my other theory, which is that without the needless repetition, the total running time would downgrade the release to an EP.
Too often these people miss the mark with a poor choice of singer or by.jamming out a riff for too long and if the first 6 tracks didn't teach you that, then get a load of side 2.
For those who like jokes that hinge on some implicit mental arithmetic taking place, the running time so far is just over 17 minutes with one track remaining.
That's right, the final song is longer than all the previous tracks put together. Oh my tormented soul! What manner of heathen torture is this?!
Y'know "Da Capo" is a musical term, which literally translated is "from the beginning" and they certainly seem to be living up to that over and over again in this hideous extended jam of an unchanging chord sequence so impotent I would struggle to justify referring to it as a vamp let alone a progression. The singer attempts increasingly ambitious lines, which fail embarrassingly. And there is nothing at the end to conclude the song, nothing to suggest this section took us anywhere or had a destination in mind. Its only purpose was to extend the running time.
To Thirty. Six. Minutes.[**]
[*] - mincetta (p. min-chetta) n. - a short piece of music, not necessarily instrumental that is a vague composite of styles; part one, part another, but all mince.
[**] - there isn't an emoji for "derisive sneer" but if there was, this'd be where you'd find an apt usage
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
#0082: Moby Grape - Moby Grape [***]
Once upon a time there was a band called The Beatles. They were very successful. Then once upon an every-year-after-that, some band would open up an album with the same guitar strummy and vocal harmony thing hoping to magnetise the screaming and the cash in their direction.
This is one of the better imitations and to be honest there's enough variety in the songs for me not to miss my ear infection but it's still a bit dull on the whole.
The Beatles were copied extensively in the sixties and ever since to varying degrees of abstraction slash annoyance depending your proclivities. Hey Grandma is a pretty good effort like a cross between Get Back* and that one that goes "you're making me feel like I've never been born"? She Said I think.
So, thinking "that's it for the next 30-40 minutes", I sat back and waited for the assembly line clean guitar and four part harmonies to carry me all the way to the run-off but then Mr Blues came along. Don't get me wrong, it's not a mind blowing track by any means, but with its almost funky groove it was an encouraging surprise.
Naturally, I perked up as I was taken thru Fall On You, an upbeat rock thing with some country twangs and chops that was remarkably pleasant and I started to feel a definite flavour with these chaps.
Track four (whatever it was called) sewed a seed of doubt. A ballad at this point is a predictable change of pace. "We're gonna take it down for a while now y'all, so feel free to smoke a jayjay and feel each other up." It's all that Eversly Brothers slow bossa with contrapuntal melodies. Nice, inoffensive and as forgettable as whoever that was you were feeling up just now.
With the ambivalently predictable but refreshing Come In The Morning acting as the crash cart, it's difficult to dislike this Keep On Running, hard soul, snare-on-the-one soundtrack stock for any movie with a road trip in it. I was definitely still in it until Omaha kicks in.
It's a frenetic and confused little number that much like the girls I wasted my affections on as a youth, it didn't seem to know what it wanted other than to be fast. The percussion was noticeably arrhythmic and if that's deliberate then I don't get it. Suggest drumming circle people have a listen. I don't get *them* either.
Someday is another slow one. This arrangement of tracks may well not have been an established pattern yet but they were certainly sticking to it. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having ballads and nobody's a bigger softy when it comes to Nielsson or Carly Simon than my speckled, portly self. But the slower ones here are lacking that special quality that makes couples want to adopt it as "our song".
Aint No Use, another forgettable one and despite the well crafted, layered guitar work it's dull dull dull lyrically and the gravitas he tries to lay on just grates. It seemed like an announcement that we were officially into the filler section now until Changes began.
I like Changes a lot and it's the main reason I will return to this album. Bass players, keep an ear out for the arpeggios in the closing section. I do like the way the bass is recorded in on this album. It's very rounded and certainly present if not forward in the mix, but not dominant.
Lazy Me - there's something very Beefheart about the melody but thankfully that's as far as the comparison goes. At the end it sounds like it's gonna go off into one of those experimental sections that last for days and who knows? Maybe it did but the engineer had the decency to fade it out before the band heard it and severely pissed me off 50 years later.
The engineer again saves their bacon on Indifference, which is a pretty basic 12/8 played at speed that gives way to straight 4 for the chorus. It's a neat trick I've seen enough times to no longer be impressed, but it at least saves the track from the tedium it first appeared to be aiming for. The track finishes and does one of those resurrection endings - I'm soonest reminded of the closing track on the Foos Colour and Shape album*. These endings need to be short or fucking awesome and our friend the engineer leaves just enough in there to once more remind us of Get Back.
Which wouldn't be released for two years. Huh.
Ah, fuck it.
Altogether it's not too bad and some I actually would like to come back to at a later date, but it's not quite good enough for 4 stars.
[*] Mostly cuz I was listening to it a few days ago ahead of their Wembley gig, now cancelled due to Dave Grohl breaking in his leg falling off stage in Stockholm. Read more about Grohl's injury and his awesome response to the situation here.
This is one of the better imitations and to be honest there's enough variety in the songs for me not to miss my ear infection but it's still a bit dull on the whole.
The Beatles were copied extensively in the sixties and ever since to varying degrees of abstraction slash annoyance depending your proclivities. Hey Grandma is a pretty good effort like a cross between Get Back* and that one that goes "you're making me feel like I've never been born"? She Said I think.
So, thinking "that's it for the next 30-40 minutes", I sat back and waited for the assembly line clean guitar and four part harmonies to carry me all the way to the run-off but then Mr Blues came along. Don't get me wrong, it's not a mind blowing track by any means, but with its almost funky groove it was an encouraging surprise.
Naturally, I perked up as I was taken thru Fall On You, an upbeat rock thing with some country twangs and chops that was remarkably pleasant and I started to feel a definite flavour with these chaps.
Track four (whatever it was called) sewed a seed of doubt. A ballad at this point is a predictable change of pace. "We're gonna take it down for a while now y'all, so feel free to smoke a jayjay and feel each other up." It's all that Eversly Brothers slow bossa with contrapuntal melodies. Nice, inoffensive and as forgettable as whoever that was you were feeling up just now.
With the ambivalently predictable but refreshing Come In The Morning acting as the crash cart, it's difficult to dislike this Keep On Running, hard soul, snare-on-the-one soundtrack stock for any movie with a road trip in it. I was definitely still in it until Omaha kicks in.
It's a frenetic and confused little number that much like the girls I wasted my affections on as a youth, it didn't seem to know what it wanted other than to be fast. The percussion was noticeably arrhythmic and if that's deliberate then I don't get it. Suggest drumming circle people have a listen. I don't get *them* either.
Someday is another slow one. This arrangement of tracks may well not have been an established pattern yet but they were certainly sticking to it. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having ballads and nobody's a bigger softy when it comes to Nielsson or Carly Simon than my speckled, portly self. But the slower ones here are lacking that special quality that makes couples want to adopt it as "our song".
Aint No Use, another forgettable one and despite the well crafted, layered guitar work it's dull dull dull lyrically and the gravitas he tries to lay on just grates. It seemed like an announcement that we were officially into the filler section now until Changes began.
I like Changes a lot and it's the main reason I will return to this album. Bass players, keep an ear out for the arpeggios in the closing section. I do like the way the bass is recorded in on this album. It's very rounded and certainly present if not forward in the mix, but not dominant.
Lazy Me - there's something very Beefheart about the melody but thankfully that's as far as the comparison goes. At the end it sounds like it's gonna go off into one of those experimental sections that last for days and who knows? Maybe it did but the engineer had the decency to fade it out before the band heard it and severely pissed me off 50 years later.
The engineer again saves their bacon on Indifference, which is a pretty basic 12/8 played at speed that gives way to straight 4 for the chorus. It's a neat trick I've seen enough times to no longer be impressed, but it at least saves the track from the tedium it first appeared to be aiming for. The track finishes and does one of those resurrection endings - I'm soonest reminded of the closing track on the Foos Colour and Shape album*. These endings need to be short or fucking awesome and our friend the engineer leaves just enough in there to once more remind us of Get Back.
Which wouldn't be released for two years. Huh.
Ah, fuck it.
Altogether it's not too bad and some I actually would like to come back to at a later date, but it's not quite good enough for 4 stars.
[*] Mostly cuz I was listening to it a few days ago ahead of their Wembley gig, now cancelled due to Dave Grohl breaking in his leg falling off stage in Stockholm. Read more about Grohl's injury and his awesome response to the situation here.
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
#0081: Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Safe As Milk [*]
I'm not gonna beat around the bush, here. I'm expecting this to be a pile of unmitigated wank. I'm encouraged to discover the good Captain is not actually a pseudonym of Frank Zappa's but he is closely associated with the man and my experiences of Zappa to date have been uniformly unpleasant.
And this is a double album from the looks of it. Nope. Just extra tracks for the CD reissue. Deep joy. I may stop at 12 tracks. That's all they had to suffer in the 60s and they had LSD readily available to distract them.
Okay, then: on with the unbiased, no preconceptions, artistic assassination.
It took a couple of tries to get thru this, I admit. The first track is a pretty reasonable effort based on a very simple pentatonic riff with some standard variations to break the monotony but then, even though the next few tracks all have different tempos, the instrumentation and vocal style is similar enough to get tiresome.
The singer sounds a lot like the guy from Creedance Clearwater Revival but lower and lacking the variation in texture. Without that, it's just like laryngitis-man playing a broken kazoo. After 4 tracks it's not even cute any more. The sheer lack of invention in the guitar work coupled with this persistent abuse of the gravel effect just makes you more sensitive to its imperfections.
Even songs that start with a promising riff you come to recognise as false hope. The so-called song "Electricity" is a perfect example of a mediocre, but workable idea placed in the flipper hands of a musical dilettante. The atmospheric noises and such like are just a cacophonous camouflage over the tortured sound of a song being run into the ground that wasn't even very good to start with.
"The following tone is a reference tone, recorded at our operating level."
Well, that was interesting. Tuneful, short and concise. Why can't they all be like that? I'll give it one star for that, although this is, of course, just an introduction to another steaming pile of blue turds.
Where There's Woman could have been a good song I think if the personnel were completely swapped out, including the engineer.
I just read some of the Wikipedia page on this idiot and aside from the word "experimental", I really can't reconcile any of what they're saying with this dog shit.
The most positive thing I can say about this is that Zappa made 100 albums and this guy only made 13.
Oh. And they're both dead, of course.
It took a couple of tries to get thru this, I admit. The first track is a pretty reasonable effort based on a very simple pentatonic riff with some standard variations to break the monotony but then, even though the next few tracks all have different tempos, the instrumentation and vocal style is similar enough to get tiresome.
The singer sounds a lot like the guy from Creedance Clearwater Revival but lower and lacking the variation in texture. Without that, it's just like laryngitis-man playing a broken kazoo. After 4 tracks it's not even cute any more. The sheer lack of invention in the guitar work coupled with this persistent abuse of the gravel effect just makes you more sensitive to its imperfections.
Even songs that start with a promising riff you come to recognise as false hope. The so-called song "Electricity" is a perfect example of a mediocre, but workable idea placed in the flipper hands of a musical dilettante. The atmospheric noises and such like are just a cacophonous camouflage over the tortured sound of a song being run into the ground that wasn't even very good to start with.
"The following tone is a reference tone, recorded at our operating level."
Well, that was interesting. Tuneful, short and concise. Why can't they all be like that? I'll give it one star for that, although this is, of course, just an introduction to another steaming pile of blue turds.
Where There's Woman could have been a good song I think if the personnel were completely swapped out, including the engineer.
I just read some of the Wikipedia page on this idiot and aside from the word "experimental", I really can't reconcile any of what they're saying with this dog shit.
The most positive thing I can say about this is that Zappa made 100 albums and this guy only made 13.
Oh. And they're both dead, of course.
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
#0080: Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield Again [****]
Opening with a riff that is too close to Satisfaction for comfort, Mr Soul is the stomper you would expect given my preamble. The lyrics quickly rescue it from being another hack 60s copy of something successful by coming in earlier than expected and carrying that intriguing weirdness of psychedelia so typical of the time. I can imagine a couple of listens in, I'll enjoy this song more and more.
So, what now? Buffalo Springfield is a name I vaguely recognise among the Springfields I have known, the others being Dusty and where the Simpsons live. Not being immediately recognisable as an iconic artist name I just assumed the next track would continue where the first had left off. But no, it's a pleasant country stroller that quits while it's ahead. It is followed by an equally short and equally violent deviation in style from the previous track. This one, Everydays, a soft blues with very nice piano support.
Track 4 is an ethereal song that floats by inoffensively, although there's something about it that demands another listen. There are layers there that I haven't quite latched onto - mainly because I'm writing this with an ear infection.
And we're back. Bluebird is another stomper and it seems the pattern is being set for this album to hold my attention by flitting between these four styles with deft studies in each. It finishes with a lovely little cadenza on acoustic guitar that leads smoothly into a jangly banjo, country playout that wouldn't sound out of place in Deliverance.
Hung Upside Down isn't really a blues but it carries a lot of that flavour with its crashing rock anthem feel and the chorus as proudly, stadium-singable as the main guitar theme.
You come off the back of this feeling a bit drained, like you've just had an unexpectedly energetic shag. You lie exhausted but satisfied, praying for the ride not to start again and as if reading your mood, the album presents you with a delicate, swishy love song on acoustic guitar that would grace the mix-tape of any lurve pad.
Okay, break's over people. It's time for the horns and the funky bass to make their entrance on Good Time Boy. This is pure soul from start to 2:11 when it stops, leaving me begging for the solos to continue.
Rock And Roll Woman quickly makes me forget my disappointment, however, with its beautifully layered harmonies and sounding very much the harbinger of Steely Dan.
This unexpected display of magnificence is rounded off by Broken Arrow, a song of mixed styles and sections, which at six minutes (and given the album's average song length of two and a half minutes), is comparatively a progressive rock epic. The sections are really crammed with odd displays of virtuosity, singsong melodies, rousing crescendos and irregular time changes. Then a low clarinet pops up out of nowhere like When I'm 64 and it plays out into a heartbeat to fade.
I am dumbfounded at the scope of this recording. So I look up a track list I can refer to while writing this review and discover this is the work of Neil Young and Stephen Stills.
D'oh.
So, what now? Buffalo Springfield is a name I vaguely recognise among the Springfields I have known, the others being Dusty and where the Simpsons live. Not being immediately recognisable as an iconic artist name I just assumed the next track would continue where the first had left off. But no, it's a pleasant country stroller that quits while it's ahead. It is followed by an equally short and equally violent deviation in style from the previous track. This one, Everydays, a soft blues with very nice piano support.
Track 4 is an ethereal song that floats by inoffensively, although there's something about it that demands another listen. There are layers there that I haven't quite latched onto - mainly because I'm writing this with an ear infection.
And we're back. Bluebird is another stomper and it seems the pattern is being set for this album to hold my attention by flitting between these four styles with deft studies in each. It finishes with a lovely little cadenza on acoustic guitar that leads smoothly into a jangly banjo, country playout that wouldn't sound out of place in Deliverance.
Hung Upside Down isn't really a blues but it carries a lot of that flavour with its crashing rock anthem feel and the chorus as proudly, stadium-singable as the main guitar theme.
You come off the back of this feeling a bit drained, like you've just had an unexpectedly energetic shag. You lie exhausted but satisfied, praying for the ride not to start again and as if reading your mood, the album presents you with a delicate, swishy love song on acoustic guitar that would grace the mix-tape of any lurve pad.
Okay, break's over people. It's time for the horns and the funky bass to make their entrance on Good Time Boy. This is pure soul from start to 2:11 when it stops, leaving me begging for the solos to continue.
Rock And Roll Woman quickly makes me forget my disappointment, however, with its beautifully layered harmonies and sounding very much the harbinger of Steely Dan.
This unexpected display of magnificence is rounded off by Broken Arrow, a song of mixed styles and sections, which at six minutes (and given the album's average song length of two and a half minutes), is comparatively a progressive rock epic. The sections are really crammed with odd displays of virtuosity, singsong melodies, rousing crescendos and irregular time changes. Then a low clarinet pops up out of nowhere like When I'm 64 and it plays out into a heartbeat to fade.
I am dumbfounded at the scope of this recording. So I look up a track list I can refer to while writing this review and discover this is the work of Neil Young and Stephen Stills.
D'oh.
Friday, June 20, 2014
#0079: Country Joe & The Fish - Electric Music For Mind And Body [**]
Yeah, the band name and the album title do not inspire confidence, do they? I had visions of confused, experimental ramblings, layer on layer, building to an apocalyptic cacophony before breaking off into the sound of kittens and car horns in the distance.
Way to be open minded, PD.
It begins with a guitar solo, punctuated by the bass and drums. The solo is in the high octaves with a very tight distortion and I'm nervous because too much of that is gonna become an irritation sooner rather than later. It only goes on for a few bars though before giving way to an easy blues groove and the vocals enter. Psychedelic lyrics from a voice that's pretty conversational for the subject matter. It's not a great voice but it's in tune and comfortable on the ear. It's a short track, not a proclamation of genius by any stretch but you get the sense it's gonna get better rather than worse.
The next track is a slinky little groove called Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine. There's a high, reedy organ sound decorating much of the tune that is sailing very close to the wind, however. If I'm distracted by the contribution of a single instrument then the song is not being served in my book.
Death Sound Blues is as you might predict, an uneventful slow blues littered with that tight, whiny guitar. He plays really well and the bass and drums are tight but I can't help feeling that his tasty phrasing would've been better employed in the middle of the neck.
It's a very tinny sound really and I feel a bit robbed cuz these songs have interesting words and good grooves but the piercing pitches of organ and lead guitar keep harshing the mellow.
Oh bollocks. Happiness Is A Porpoise Mouth delivers on its promise of being pretentious twaddle for every one of its 171 seconds. This is followed by 7 minutes and 24 seconds of confused wank entitled Section 43. If you ever had a jam on drugs - acid in particular, you'll recognise the common failing of the substance to keep your attention on what the rest of the players are doing. It's a journey, sure but you depart a unit of musicians working on something recognisable. You arrive a collection of individuals who are no longer aware of each other, making random noises that more by luck than judgment are still in the same key.
Then suddenly we're back in the land of the mentally competent. Superbird is a very groovy little protest song about Vietnam. It seems that way to me anyway. Talks about sending Lynden Johnson back to Texas. Great tune and followed by an inoffensive pop number that even though they're not good enough singers to pull off the harmonies they're going for, I'm still grateful it's not another 7 minute acid jam.
Love has a false start. But it's done quickly enough to escape my wrath and it's a groovy tune. I'm starting to rediscover my faith in this album not being a dead loss. But I spoke too soon.
The next one's called Bass Strings. Okay. So we can't even be fucked to think of titles any more. It's very Doorsy and that's just about as damning a summary as I can give.
The Masked Marauder sees the organ actually discover a lower octave which is a blessed reprieve at this point but it's too little too late. It's an instrumental piece with two sections but never really finds its feet in either.
Electric Music For Mind And Body concludes its pioneering sojourn in the land of psychedelic rock with 7 minutes of exactly the sort of thing I was talking about a few paragraphs back. It's fine if you're fucked out of your mind. But who wants to slip themselves a musical roofy?
Way to be open minded, PD.
It begins with a guitar solo, punctuated by the bass and drums. The solo is in the high octaves with a very tight distortion and I'm nervous because too much of that is gonna become an irritation sooner rather than later. It only goes on for a few bars though before giving way to an easy blues groove and the vocals enter. Psychedelic lyrics from a voice that's pretty conversational for the subject matter. It's not a great voice but it's in tune and comfortable on the ear. It's a short track, not a proclamation of genius by any stretch but you get the sense it's gonna get better rather than worse.
The next track is a slinky little groove called Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine. There's a high, reedy organ sound decorating much of the tune that is sailing very close to the wind, however. If I'm distracted by the contribution of a single instrument then the song is not being served in my book.
Death Sound Blues is as you might predict, an uneventful slow blues littered with that tight, whiny guitar. He plays really well and the bass and drums are tight but I can't help feeling that his tasty phrasing would've been better employed in the middle of the neck.
It's a very tinny sound really and I feel a bit robbed cuz these songs have interesting words and good grooves but the piercing pitches of organ and lead guitar keep harshing the mellow.
Oh bollocks. Happiness Is A Porpoise Mouth delivers on its promise of being pretentious twaddle for every one of its 171 seconds. This is followed by 7 minutes and 24 seconds of confused wank entitled Section 43. If you ever had a jam on drugs - acid in particular, you'll recognise the common failing of the substance to keep your attention on what the rest of the players are doing. It's a journey, sure but you depart a unit of musicians working on something recognisable. You arrive a collection of individuals who are no longer aware of each other, making random noises that more by luck than judgment are still in the same key.
Then suddenly we're back in the land of the mentally competent. Superbird is a very groovy little protest song about Vietnam. It seems that way to me anyway. Talks about sending Lynden Johnson back to Texas. Great tune and followed by an inoffensive pop number that even though they're not good enough singers to pull off the harmonies they're going for, I'm still grateful it's not another 7 minute acid jam.
Love has a false start. But it's done quickly enough to escape my wrath and it's a groovy tune. I'm starting to rediscover my faith in this album not being a dead loss. But I spoke too soon.
The next one's called Bass Strings. Okay. So we can't even be fucked to think of titles any more. It's very Doorsy and that's just about as damning a summary as I can give.
The Masked Marauder sees the organ actually discover a lower octave which is a blessed reprieve at this point but it's too little too late. It's an instrumental piece with two sections but never really finds its feet in either.
Electric Music For Mind And Body concludes its pioneering sojourn in the land of psychedelic rock with 7 minutes of exactly the sort of thing I was talking about a few paragraphs back. It's fine if you're fucked out of your mind. But who wants to slip themselves a musical roofy?
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